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Saturday, February 28, 2015

Pancake Day

The magician has gone walking, as he
does. Working small magics in small towns, fixing small breaks in the
world, nudging everything from walls to sewer pipes back into place.
An ugly family fight over whether to repair the fridge or dishwasher
is averted when the fridge fixes itself: small things, casting
ripples. I am almost certain he does this because he thinks it is
what magic should be far, and not to balance the debts accruing
against him: the more a magician takes from the world, the more is
demanded in return.

Fae do not have this problem. We are
the payment of debt: our power is our prison, our will our own
jailer. I doubt any magician sees that; I doubt anyone else sees it.
It is not something we reveal, certainly not something we talk about.
But even fae glamour has hard limits, and the magician has left it to
me to deal with the CSIS agents that are hunting me. They know Dana
is not really a CSIS agent, they know a fae created her as a body and
tricked their entire system into believing I existed.

I was almost destroyed some months ago.
My glamour has been healing – I have been healing – since then,
but they damage allowed the Canadian government spies to find out who
and what I am. At least, that is the narrative I tell myself since I
would rather not consider other ones. The downside of a glamour that
can make reality shape itself to your will is that it is very hard to
lie to yourself. CSIS may have figured out what I was, but to seek to
destroy me, to unleash weapons designed to nullify tim in an area:
that seems too far a reaction, even for humans.

And so I am sitting in a coffee shop
waiting for CSIS agents to find me. They cannot destroy me: they do
not have power enough for that, I think, but I have few options to
end their feud against me that would not involve killing them all. A
fae who runs out of tricks is often little better than the monsters.
I get a third coffee, drinking it slowly. I am hoping to bluff them,
and failingthat to offer bribes.

The boy who comes into the coffee shop
is an unexpected surprise. Jay is perhaps eleven in appearance, from
far Outside the universe and looks like a normal blind human child,
using his cane to go between tables and then plopping down into the
seat across from me with a huge, friendly grin. “Hi!”

“The magician is not here.”

“I know Honcho is all busy, and
Charlie is doing stuff with gods she doesn’t need my help with and
you have lots of meany bindings converging on you so you’re busy
and not busy all at once. So I thought I’d come and say hi.”

“Meany bindings,” I say evenly. Jay
can sense and manipulate bindings to a degree that is positively
absurd.

“Uh-huh.”

“You came to gloat, then?”

“Huh?” Jay sits back at that,
blinking. His eyes are filled with broken light under dark glasses
and he looks hurt. “I only do that when I beat Charlie in a
snowball fight and anyway, did you know there is an IHOP down the
road and I like pancakes?”

“I am given to understand that there
is little food you do not like.”

“Well, I haven’t found it yet but
I’m willing to try and,” he adds, throwing words like exuberant
weapons, “you’re not busy and I’m only as busy as a not-busy
Jay so I thought pancakes!”

“You wish for me to buy you
pancakes.” He beams. I would like to say I am immune to his grin,
but I strongly suspect I am not. “And in turn, what will you do for
me?”

“I can help make those mean bindings
go away,” he says, and for Jay it’s a simple statement of fact.

“Very well.” I stand, and Jay hops
to his feet. I hold out a hand and he takes it as I lead him out the
door and down the street to the IHOP, Jay asking what pancakes I like
best and if I prefer waffles over French toast. I answer absently,
having no view one way or the other, find us a table in IHOP and
order food.

Jay spends the next hour eating
pancakes with syrup. No waffles, no French toast, no sides. Just a
happy, sticky mess of pancakes and hot chocolate. Somewhere during
that, the knowing that I being hunted is simply gone, as CSIS is no
longer interested in seeking me out. The magician could have done
this, but not without a heavy cost to himself: no magician lightly
twists free will that far and fae cannot do it. We may trick or
destroy, but they are not the same things. That this creature can
casually do such things with no cost is more than a little
terrifying.

“You know that I may not be able to
restore your sight.”

“Huh? Oh, this wasn’t about that at
all! I don’t want Honcho getting hurt or losing you cuz even
magicians shouldn’t be alone and he’s my friend but I think he
needs you more than friends?”

“More than friends?”

“Like a friend who isn’t a – like
a frienemy,” he says with a huge grin. “I just made that up.
Anyway, Honcho is kind of weird right now, and you are all kinds of
weird, so!”

“And you are not weird,” I ask
despite myself.

“I’m a Jay,” he says as if that
explains everything, and finishes off a final plate of pancakes
before sitting back with a huge sigh. “And I know you might not be
able to fix my sight but you’re going to try, right, and that’s
the important part.”

“I am, yes.” I get napkins and
insist on cleaning off his face and fingers, mostly because he
squirms and grumbles about it all and it somewhat makes up for the
cost of the food. We leave the IHOP and Jay thanks me for the food
with a hug – not a huge one, but even so – and is simply gone a
moment later.

I walk slowly back to the hotel the
magician and I are staying at. I suspect the entity named Jay could
fix his own vision, but the magician promised to do it so he waits
for him to instead. That kind of trust is more than a little
terrifying in itself and I begin to wonder how the magician engenders
such things in others, but it is not for me to discover. I carry
secrets that he must never learn, barriers that would stand between
us and true friendship.

But for the first time, I find myself
considering how they could be broken down.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”